The prospect of a tied house has kept the Victorian Parliament on a knife edge for the past three years and Premier
Denis Napthine
has a plan to fix it.

It is little wonder the issue is on his mind. The state’s lower house has 88 seats of which the Liberal and National parties hold 44. Of the remainder Labor holds 43 and then there is controversial former Liberal MP turned independent Geoff Shaw.

Every time the government wants to pass legislation it needs Mr Shaw’s vote or the house is tied 44–all. The state’s constitution does not explicitly contemplate a tie, meaning there is uncertainty about what would happen if Labor were to win a byelection.

In an interview late in 2013 marking a year until the 2014 election, the Australian Financial Review asked Dr Napthine whether he would act on the issue.

“I don’t think they are things that can be changed quickly but there are things you might see me float for public consideration," he said.

One such idea centres on the selection of the parliamentary Speaker. At the moment the selection of the Speaker effectively deprives the government of a vote.

This is because the Speaker can only use their casting vote in favour of the status quo so not to effect new legislation.

Last term in office

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Dr Napthine, who has served in Parliament for 25 years, said he would like to see the MP selected as Speaker effectively forfeit their seat. The party that had claimed that seat would then be able to install a replacement, he said.

“It creates the extra seat without creating a seat.

“People who nominate or indicate they wish to take those positions should be people who have advised that this will be their last term in office as parliamentarians," he said.

“Once they are elected as Speaker they would immediately resign from their party and they would be replaced in their seat by the party’s selection.

“That way the seat doesn’t go unrepresented on the floor of the house and the person in the chair has no obligation to either side but has generally a reasonable career of political experience."

The advantage of picking people who are looking to retire would mean they would usually have experience and expertise in the often arcane world of parliamentary rulings, he said.

“They are generally people of the government side so they’re generally [on board]

Dr Napthine argues that his system would not require a complicated redrawing of upper house electorates, which are linked to groups of lower house seats.

This idea has been floated in Britain to get around the apolitical nature of the Speaker in the House of Commons.

Dr Napthine said he believed presiding officers were not as able to fully represent their electorates.

“I served as a local member when I had David Hawker as a Federal Speaker and Bruce Chamberlain as an upper house member who was a president.

Under a cloud

In both those cases they were very good in their respective roles but it made them less likely to be involved in local grassroots political campaigns and fights because they had to have a degree of independence, which I always felt meant that the local electorate wasn’t as well represented in the debates in the Parliament." he said.

The government’s choice of Speaker, Ken Smith, endured a torrid challenge from the opposition and Mr Shaw towards the end of 2013.

His position is still under a cloud as Labor maintain he has behaved with bias.

Dr Napthine said he believed presiding officers would also resign from their party.

“This is not a partisan thing. The parliament would work better if the speaker or the president were not a member of a party, had already indicated they weren’t going to contest the next election and so weren’t beholden to the party or to the premier or the leader of the day and they could still bring their expertise and their skill and their seat would not be unrepresented on the floor of the house," he said.